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Masters of Propaganda to the end….

Around 60 million people had perished by the end of the Soviet union in 1991, and although Glasnost and Perestroika were beginning by the end of the communist era to bring some things into the light and to allow the public a measure of “questionment” of the party line, there was still a shadow cast by the iron curtain. When we think of the Soviet Union, we know that they, the party were great creators of propaganda, and distributed it freely to mask the poverty and wholesale slaughter during the war, and in the postwar years. Propaganda was used heavily, in every walk of life, from stamps to magazines to buildings (yes buildings!) and of course the posters synonymous with Soviet Russia. The heavy red and black tones on white/yellowish paper that were more through necessity than propgandistic power; the reasoning was more behind the need to supply ink and press equipment, to do these posters as rudimentary schemes were used (the heavy block colours also helped to fix the images firmly in peoples minds, such as using red for soviet soldiers etc… a greta thing for areas of low literacy). I won’t pretend this article is making any great revelations, but I think this and reading this article in the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2406192/Communism-colour-Vivid-photographs-portray-life-Soviet-Union-final-year-Stalin-era.html which shows heavily stocked shelves, happy laughing people, and young socialist-socialites in glorious techni-colour….. may prompt people to have a peruse over something they once before may have thought uninteresting. In this article they have cursorily glanced through the propaganda used in the Soviet Unions key magazine; one could almost liken it to a Communist Hello, or possibly Vogue it shows of polit-bureau members and other people, as well as glorifying the Soviet Unions achievements, it is difficult to pin down as we no longer really have such a broadly propagandistic magazine. A good read and likely to wet your appetite to take things further.